Category Garden

• Scythes

  I NEVER REST IN recommending Alexander Langlands’ Craeft to people. It’s a book on traditional and pre-automation craft and maintenance, but also about how doing such activity, or not doing it, has a cognitive effect on how we interact with our physical world of objects and environment. Yes, it’s very middle-aged British man, but as one friend to whom I recommended put it, it’s easy to be spiritually a middle-aged British man, prepared to talk at length about tools, and bee keeping, and lime burning, and roof construction, and many other things. Counter to the last post on historical recreationism and its discontents, such people are entirely and convincingly sincere, in a way that I find compelling and almost physically appealing. I am therefore delighted to find (thanks to this thread) that there is a small but burgeoning corner of the Australian rural marketplace which is all about scything and scythes; the manual tool you know about from its association with Death, but which does the same job as a petrol brush cutter, snipper, or push mower, but quietly. Consider the answer—undeniable—from one site’s FAQ, to the question ‘why buy a scythe’:

  

  Posted 16 December 2019 · Author Liam Hogan

• Compost

  THE INTERNET IS A LIMITLESS source of contradictory information on how one should compost. I understand the basics; you put organic matter together with a decent proportion of carbon and nitrogen sources, then you leave it alone. But should I bother to shove a fork in it twice a week? Do I need a second to establish a cycle? What should my position on eggshells and scraps of meat be? Is it hot or cold enough? How do you promote organic breakdown and stop maggots or pests getting in? Should I have added chicken shit? Does one layer a compost heap like a good lasagna¹ or rotate the pile, or leave it be entirely? If I keep googling “nitrogen ratio” am I going to get a knock on the door from the Australian security organisation?

  Posted 26 October 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Cold Framin'

  LISTEN TO ANOTHER PARABLE. THERE was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country…
  —Matthew 21:33

  If you’ve skimmed the Gospel, you know the story. After making sound property and infrastructure investments, a vineyard’s owner’s slaves and sons go to collect the dues, but meet gruesome ends. The landowner, as you’d expect in a story told by the Son of Man, “[puts] those wretches to a miserable death”.

  The moral, of course, is if you’re a tenant with a garden, don’t stop paying rent no matter what the dispute, put all communications in writing, have the number for the CTTT handy, and read your Residential Tenancy Agreement.

  Posted 27 June 2011 · Author Liam Hogan